Elisabeth Spalding

Flower Arrangement, Still Life Painting with Daffodils, Tulips and Snapdragons

1933

Untitled (Still Life with Pink Roses) is an oil on canvas painting by David Spivak (1893-1932) . Presented in a custom gold frame, outer dimensions measure 19 ⅞ x 24 x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 12 x 16 inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born in Philadelphia in 1893, David and his family moved to Denver in 1895 due to his mother’s ill health. He attended elementary and high school in Denver, and was briefly enrolled at the University of Denver, where his mother taught Russian. He was drawn to art at a young age, however the University of Denver did not offer a degree program in fine art, and art education in the Denver area was lacking. Spivak’s father, Dr. Charles Spivak, prominent Denver physician and founder of the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society, was concerned about his son’s career choice, hoping David would instead follow in his footsteps. David’s mother, however, recognized her son’s artistic talent and felt it needed nurturing. In 1912, Spivak moved to Chicago to attend the Chicago Art Institute where he worked under John Morton and Wellington Reynolds (1865 – 1949). After a two-year stint in Chicago, Spivak spent 3 years in New York attending the Arts Students League where he studied under Robert Henri, a prominent Ashcan School artist. Between 1914 and 1917, Spivak mostly painted portraiture, and Henri’s artistic influence can be seen in Spivak’s work during this period. Spivak was drafted into the Army in 1918 because of World War I. He spent a year stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. In 1919, he moved back to Denver in and began working as an artist. His dedication to art extended beyond art making into education. He taught at various high schools throughout Denver, as well as the Denver Academy of Applied Arts, the Denver Art Institute, and the Chappell School of Art. Spivak was also a central figure in the art community, helping to develop the Denver Art Museum, as a founding member, along with Dean Babcock and Albert Bancroft, of the Denver Artists’ Guild in 1928 (where he served as president at the time of his death), and as the head of fine art exhibits at the Colorado State Fair. He believed that bringing art into the lives of all people, regardless of status or class, was paramount. In his short life, Spivak was quite prolific, producing over 300 paintings between 1914 and 1932. He excelled in landscape painting and portraiture, and his style was rooted in impressionism. Spivak’s contemporaries who also painted in an impressionistic manner include Robert Graham, Frank Vavra...

An original modernist still life oil painting by John E. Thompson (1882-1945), table is draped in red cloth and flowers in vase are red, yellow, blue/purple and white with green stem...

"High Rolls, New Mexico", is a oil on canvas by Andreas Storrs Andersen (1908-1974) of a wooden church along a dirt road in the mountains with clouds in the background. Painted in a ...

Oil on board painting by Paul Kauvar Smith (1893-1977) of a still life of flowers on a table in an interior scene with a mirror in the background. American Modernist still life painting with zinnias and abstract paintings in an artists studio. Presented framed, outer dimensions measure 27 ⅝ x 31 ¾ x 1 ⅛ inches. Image size is 19 ½ x 23 ½ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: In 1915, Paul Kauver Smith studied commercial art and design at the St. Louis School of Fine Art for two years. His studies were interrupted by World War I during which he served as a corporal in the U.S. Army. After the war he returned to the School of Fine Art and also studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis with Fred G. Carpenter, himself a student of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Colarossi Academy in Paris. Carpenter was known as a marvelous colorist who "thought every inch of a painting should be fascinating…and should be as interesting close up as from a distance." His approach is reflected in many of Smith’s paintings, both representational and abstract in style, done later in Colorado. In 1921, Smith relocated to Denver where he studied for two years at the Denver Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, formerly located in Brinton Terrace on 18th Street in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. His teacher was John E. Thompson, another important influence as a pioneer of modernism in Denver. The Academy hired Smith as an instructor in 1923 and that same year the Denver Art Museum included his work for the first time in its 29th annual juried exhibition. He later had two solo shows at the museum, which added his work to its Anne Evans Collection. In 1959 the museum reproduced Houses at Victor, for its Western Heritage Exhibition catalog. During the year of 1928 he witnessed the Articles of Incorporation of the Denver Artists Guild, comprising most of the city’s professional artists. He also belonged to the American Artists Professional League, also organized in 1928 by fifteen members of the Salmagundi Club in New York to protect artists’ interest and promote traditional American art. He was one of some two dozen Colorado artists designated to participate in the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP, 1933-34), the first federally-sponsored program for artists during the Great Depression. Around 1928 Smith became the "Hermit of Stuart Street," and remained a life-long bachelor. One painting, View from My Window, depicts his immediate neighborhood. Living for more than thirty years at 1039 Stuart Street in West Denver, he gave up creature comforts that most people take for granted to have the freedom to devote his life to the pursuit of art. In the first twenty-five years of his career, his paintings focused on the Colorado landscape and its mining towns with their decaying buildings as relics of the past. His piece, Miner’s House at Victor, Colorado illustrates the description of his work in this genre as described by Denver artist and art writer, Arneill Downs, "The jewel-like shapes and colors the artist uses gives the most decrepit objects style. The decaying buildings of ghost towns, grouped together on canvas, glow like a patchwork quilt." Smith described his technique as "I start lean and finish fat." He worked first with turpentine as a medium and ended up with pure pigment put on with a palette knife. In addition to Colorado scenes...

Original vintage 1945 oil painting with an interior still life with a vase of flowers, tea cup, and drapery by 20th century Colorado modernist, John E. Thompson (1882-1945). Oil on c...

"Still Life with Masks", vintage original semi-abstract painting by 20th century Denver artist, Edward Marecak (1919-1993) from 1983. Oil Paint on board with a mid-century modern fe...

This painting is signed in the upper right corner "Dolya" which appears to be a word, not a name, it could refer to a village in Svatove Raion Ukraine. We have never been successful...

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Kitchen stove with pots and pans